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SPEECH 

4-f' 

OP 7 ^ f 



HENRY CHAMPION DEIIM, 



Oir- COTSIIvrECTICXJX, 



President's ]P1 



an 



STATE RENOYATION, 

DELIVERED FEBRUARY 27th, li;64. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

GIBSON BROTHERS, PRINTERS. 
1864. 



'T-r 






aiiaT 



SPEECH 

OF 

HENRY CHAMPION DEMING, 

OF CONNECTICUT, 

ON THE PRESIDENT'S PLAN FOR STATE RENOVATION, 

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, 

FIRST SESSION, THIRTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 
Februabt 27, 1864. 



The House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, 
Mr. DEMING rose and said — 

Mr. Chairman, I was induced to seek the floor when 
the House was last in Committee upon the present subject, 
because the two speeches to which I had listened upon the 
President's message paid but a passing gla.nce to what is to 
me its most important and most memorable feature ; I mean 
its plan of State renovation. As it is the first distinct inti- 
mation from an authoritative source that the war is not to 
be everlasting, and that States may yet be restored, and 
that the rebuilding of our dilapidated temple may yet be 
commenced, it deserves to be received with fuller ceremonies 
and with ampler honors. It is at least refreshing to those who 
have feared that between State secession on the one hand, 
and State annihilation on the other, the Federal system 
would be ground to atoms^, and not even territorial unity 
saved from the general wreck. 

In surveying the insurgent States we see at a glance 
that the elements which may create and inspire a new 
national life^ and those which may corrupt and destroy it, 
are now both floundering together in the great vortex of 
civil war, and that, unless this "tumult and confusion all 
embroiled" is to last for ever, these elements must be sum- 
moned to separate and recombine according to their respec- 
tive natures, and assert their appropriate functions, and 
work out energetically their inheriting aflinities of life unto 
life and death unto death. If the neutralizing of the ele- 
ments of order was the only evil of this unnatural combina- 



tioii, it would most pathetically appeal to all that can be 
done by executive interposition for its correction. But when 
we consider that by a stern implication of law, according to ■ 
its authoritative expounders, all distinction between guilt 
and innocence in the insurgent States is also confounded, 
and that the loyal Avithin the limits of this Civil War are 
subjected to the same pains, penalties and forfeitures with 
the disloyal, a case so pitiable is stated that it should appeal 
to heaven and earth for relief. 

It is to this precise anomaly that the President's plan 
addresses itself. It seeks to liberate order from this inert 
and paralyzing combination, to exempt innocence from being 
confounded with guilt, to separate loyalty from that un- 
wholesome contact which attaches to it the contagion, and 
subjects it, in the eye of the law, to the punishments of 
crime. 

The task essayed is one of infinite difficulties and em- 
barrassments, and no plan of restoration devised by finite 
wisdom could approximate toward completeness ai the out- 
set, because the facts upon which it should be based are to a 
great extent prospective, and because it must constantly 
modify and change itself according to new developments as 
it advances into the future. The President, therefore, has 
wisely abstained from proposing anything but a transitional 
plan^ adapted to the exigencies of tlie hour, and merely 
bridging the chasm between State anarchy and State restora- 
tion. It professes on its face to be temporary only, and not 
final or unchangeable; contenting itself with commencing 
the great deliverance, and by the necessities of the case 
restricting itself to such initiatory modes and such tentative 
processes for renovating the insurgent States as our present 
imperfect knowledge of their condition and limited control 
over them permits him to employ. 

In attempting to solve this most perplexing of political 
problems at the present stage of its evolution, no statesman 
who relies upon merely human observation and forethought 
could have adopted any difierent method. If you demand 
just now and here a thorough and perfect code and science 
of reconstruction, you must go to those who enjoy special 
revelations and inspired prevision of the future. Mere men 
must grope their way when dealing with what is beyond 



the limits of their knowledge, and it is by experimental 
processes alone that the race- has succeeded in reachin^r the 
certainties of science and in triumphing over the obstacles 
and mysteries which have beset it from infancy. 

While, therefore, in my judgment, the President's plan 
18 not beyond cavil, it is as complete and comprehensive as 
the intricacies of the subject and its present development 
will permit, and it possesses also the rare merit of beino- just 
to the Government, just to the insurgent States, and just to 
tiie slave ; and it is to these three characteristics that I pro- 
pose to restrict my remarks at present.' 
1. It is just to the Government. 

It surrenders no power or jurisdiction which the Govern- 
ment has ever claimed; it maintains everv law which Con- 
gress has passed during the Civil War ; it abandons no exe- 
cutive measure which the exigencies of that war has evoked- 
It yields to armed enemies none of their insolent demands,' 
and to cold friends none of their temporizing expedients. 

return ^^^^^f ,^*^*^« '^'^^^ "Pon this plan, they will 
return acknowledging all the claims of the Government 
which they made the pretext of revolt, and abjuring the 
claims which they propounded as their ultimatum of peace 
ihey will return not only repudiating the glosses which, 
or more than thirty years, they have attempted to foist upon 
the Constitution, but also their darling policy of extending 
and propagating slavery, to which, for a longer period, they 
have attempted to make it subservient. They will return 

itlTfTli^'^^^^'f *' ^^ ''^'''''' ^^^' ''^'^'^' ^^^' clarified 

tselt by blood of all taint and stench of secession, and which 

a^^^^^^^^^ its self-existence by nearly devouring one 

^aUof Its assumed creators. They will find that the fire 

llvtvTr'^' ""''' this District has not only burnt oft' 

tsel a;^ ;'^^.^^"^^^^ '^" '''' ^^^ '''^ ^f i* - the soil 
selt, and that since their Hegira from this Hall, the ques- 

B klTes^b^^' their Pryors, their Keitts, their Cobbs'Ind 

seSl and tHr f^^^--l«^d it has been definitely 

ettled, and that freedom is now securelv seated upon our 

riX JT^'^'^f '^^ *'^ ^''"^''^^ ^"^"-^ -ci t r: 

of f ee Ir "'^"' ""'" ^^^^^^^^ ^'^ P^^-ted the seed 

of fiee lepubhcs as near the setting sun as she is herself to 
his rising beams, so that when her choral hymn of rejoicing 



liberty sweeps over the Father of Waters, it can be caught 
up j)y younger voices and pealed in one continuous and un- 
broken strain until it is lost in the deep-toned anthem of the 
vast, peaceful sea. They will find that their old feudal 
Bastile, strong and impregnable though it once seemed, has 
been undermined by our armies, and blown up and scattered 
into fragments by those of their own kin who preferred the 
destruction of slavery to the death of the nation. They will 
find that military necessities, which they themselves created, 
have placed Springfield rifles into the hands of slaves, from 
which the same necessities had previously struck ofi" the fet- 
ters, and that a hundred thousand of these once groveling 
bondsmen, marshalled into the armies of the Union and 
trained in military skill and discipline, now defiantly hold 
the acres over which they were once tracked by bloodhounds, 
and domineer the plantations where they once toiled under 
the lash of the overseer. They will return finally with won- 
derfully increased respect for Uncle Sam, bowing obsequi- 
ously to him, as a respectable living thing, self-sustained, 
and not sustained by their sufferance, with a power and will 
of his own, and breath in his nostrils not breathed into it by 
them, with a right hand strong enough to bruise and break, 
and with a face that will hereafter be a terror to all his 

enemies. 

2. The President's plan is just to the insurgent States. 

And first, are those excluded from amnesty and pardon 
justly and rightfully excluded? This question deserves n<> 
nicetv of discussion, for upon it there can be but little honest 
difierence ofopinion. The main conditions which the Preni- 
dent imposes upon those he restores to pardon are contained 
in an oath, and the virtue of an oath lies in its obligatory 
and binding force upon the conscience. He therefore justly 
excludes from pardon all who have demonstrated by mani- 
fest periury their contempt of its obligations. The forsworn 
judges who liave surrendered honor on our decorous bench 
for infamy on a judgment' seat reared by Civil War, the for- 
sworn officers, military and naval, who have prostituted to 
the rebellion the skill in arms which they acquired as wards 
and beneficiaries of the Government, are justly and right- 
eously debarred from amnesty because they have not con- 
science or honor enough left to be grappled by an oath. 



•7 

Crimes differ in degree ; and the experience of mankind 
establishes that while some can be safely pardoned without 
detriment to the common weal, there are others which can- 
not go unpunished without its constant peril or its certain 
destruction. The high civil and diplomatic magnates of 
this most unprovoked rebellion, the military Molochs whose 
rank entitles them to guilty pre-eminence, are left to lie 
unshrived, unaneled, in the pit they have digged for them- 
selves, because among the crimes pronounced inexpiable by 
the consenting voice of all the ages, is that of those arch- 
rebels and arch-traitors who instigate and lead a civil war, 
the sum and expressed essence of every crime. The society 
which tolerates such parricides cannot exist a moment in 
safety. Rome could enjoy no repose while Catiline lived. 
France was drenched in blood until Robespierre was guil- 
lotined. Davis will convulse Secessia as soon as he is not 
allowed to reign, and if its bonds had been worth stealing, 
Floyd would have robbed it before he died. 

The miscreants who have violated the laws of war, and 
ostracized themselves from human sympathy by murdering 
and torturing disarmed and helpless prisoners of war, are 
justly left to work out their own damnation ; and why ? 
Because to forgive a Thug who maims and murders in the 
name of chivalry would be an outrage upon civilization. 

Secondly. Are the terms imposed upon those included in 
the amnesty just and right ? 

What are these terms? There are live of them : 1. An 
oath to sustain the Constitution. 2. An oath to sustain the 
Anti-Slavery legislation. 3. An oath to sustain the Presi- 
dent's proclamation. 4. Slave property is withheld in gen- 
eral restitution. 5. Property, where the rights of third 
parties have intervened, is also withheld. 

The committee will observe that the first three of these 
conditions are in the form of an oath. Now, I agree mainly 
with my friend from Kentucky, [Mr. Yeaman,] who has 
spoken upon this question, when he says that great quarrels 
are settled by the fortunes of war and by the domination of 
great ideas and principles, rather than by the formality of 
taking oaths and recording them ; and that restoration is 
attained when the ideas and the forces of the nation have 
prevailed over the ideas and the forces of secession and 



8 

national disintegration. It appears to me, however, that 
this is an explanation of the method by which social' laws 
and influences, rather than political agencies, may reunite a 
divided society. The ideas and forces of which he speaks 
are embodied in human beings who, at the present stage of 
of our advance, must continue to be governed and directed ' 
by political administration and its appropriate machinery 
Sociology must wait for many decades before its sublime 
speculations can be applied to practical affairs. In political 
parlance, tlie elements which he represents as struggling for 
preponderance are loyalty and disloyalty. An oath of alle- 
giance may not be an infallible mode of discriminating 
between those who will faithfully and sincerely support a 
Government and those who will desert and betray it ; but 
who can at present propound a better test ? I can conceive 
of a stage in our future culmination when all the masks, 
disguises, and hypocrisies of mankind will be stripped off,' 
and their most interior motions and impulses stand revealed! 
I can imagine that the inhabitants of earth may yet become 
as perfect as the inhabitants of the higher spheres, who 
according to clairvoyant philosophers, are incapable of deceit 
and cannot speak at all without speaking the truth. But in 
the nineteenth century, and with our present imperfect 
means of penetrating men's real purposes, we must rely upon 
the old-fashioned oath of allegiance as the best criterion of 
their rectitude or want of it. It is the test which has been 
used in Government since the morning stars sang together ; 
it was used in the construction of our present system, and 
must be used in the reconstruction if we are to commence 
the work of renovation by separating the true from the false, 
the loyal from the disloyal, the wheat from the tares. 

It is objected to this plan that it pardons the rebel on con- 
dition of his doing a certain thing, and requires tlie loyal 
man to do the same thing before he can participate in a State 
government. The Supreme Court of the United States has 
unanimously decided that from the 13th day of July, 1861, 
the date of the approval of the non-intercourse act, there 
has been between 4he Government and the confederate States 
a civil territorial war ; and it is laid down as a principle in 
the same momentous decision that "the laws of war, whether 
the war be civil or inter gentes, convert every citizen of a 



3 



hostile State into a public enemy and treat him accordingly." 
From the outbreak of this rebellion to the present hour, on 
the Non-Intercourse Act, on the Confiscation Act, on the Con- 
scription Act, on every vigorous and earnest measure of leg- 
islation the gentlemen on the other side of the House have 
importunately invoked the Constitution and the laws, and 
here they have them, in full measure and running over; law 
certain, but law inexorable, as it was in Shylock's case; law 
not according to the Solicitor of the War Department, but 
law according to the supreme arbiter of mooted constitu- 
tional questions. Since the adoption of the Constitution the 
court has devoted itself almost exclusively to the study and 
interpretation of its peace side, and out of, it they have 
extracted power and authority enough for all the emergen- 
cies of peace and for all the operations and enterprises of a 
tranquil society. When the judges shall have given to its 
ivar side one tithe of the attention and study which they 
have given to its peace side, they will discover power enough 
for all the emergencies of war ; power enough for self-defense, 
whether the Government it organizes is attacked in the guise 
of secession or of revolution ; power enough to inflict full 
and exemplary punishment upon all who assail it, whether 
they are seceders, rebels, traitors, or public enemies. The 
decision in the prize cases is the first fruit of these new 
studies, covering by its vast sweep all the war legislation 
that has been so severely criticised and so savagely rebuked. 
Before the 13th of July it might or might not have been, 
according to the judges, a personal war. Before that time 
it might or might not have been that the only enemy the 
Government could recognize was the person engaged in the 
rebellion, as the opponents of the Administration have 
clamorously asserted, and that all others were peaceful citi- 
zens, entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship 
under the Constitution. But since the Non-Intercourse Act 
no such claim can be made, for the point is authoritatively 
settled by the agreement of all the judges that from that 
time the personal war became a civil territorial tear, giving 
to the United States full belligerent rights against all the 
inhabitants of the rebellious districts, and converting them 
all, in the eye of the law, into public enemies. 

It does not by any means follow that because the rebels 



10 

have forfeited all constitutional rights and constitutional 
guarantees, they have thereby absolved themselves from covMi- 
tutional obligation. They are " none the less enemies because 
they are traitors," says Judge Grier ; and he might have 
said that they have not ceased to be traitors because they are 
enemies. In other words, the President may elect to pursue 
them either as enemies or traitors, by the Constitution or by 
the laws of war. If he elects to pursue them as traitors, he 
must pursue them in accordance with the constitutional defi- 
nition of treason and by the mode and with the limitation it 
clearly indicates in the section devoted to that crime. If he 
elects to pursue them as enemies, there is no limit and re- 
straint upon his discretion but the laws of war. The Duke 
of Cumberland, when in 1745 he subdued the Scotch rebels, 
could have tried them all at a drum-head court-martial, or 
handed them over to the civil tribunals to be tried according 
to the laws of England defining treason. 

Here, then, you have it. It is "so nominated in the 
bond," that within that boundary *' marked by a line of 
bayonets," every citizen, whatever his conduct, whether 
Union or rebel, loyal or disloyal, is a public enemy, and 
liable to be treated as such. Now, is it not rather too late 
in the day to declare that all within that line do not need 
pardon before they can be restored to the rights of citizenship 
which they have forfeited as public enemies ? It is not, as 
has been stated by some, a '^superfluous boon" which the 
President tenders to the loyal man, nor has he adroitly 
blended together the conditions of pardon with qualifications 
for citizenship. It was with a full knowledge and under- 
standing of the effect and operation of this decision in the 
prize cases, and from his conviction that a man who had 
never swerved from his allegiance might be caught in the 
meshes of this legal implication that induced the President 
to disregard the broad moral distinction between the two 
classes, and to extend his clemency to all who in legal con- 
templation were public enemies. In the very opening sen- 
tence of his proclamation he offers it to all who have '^ di- 
rectly or bif w^ilication " participated in the rebellion. 

Let me now for a moment examine more in detail the terms 
of the President's plan. In the first place he requires that 
all who accept his clemency shall swear '' to henceforth faith- 



11 



fully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the 
United States, and the Union thereunder." That this is 
a just and righteous demand from all who have " directly or 
by implication " participated in the rebellion, the most scru- 
pulous and tender-hearted apologi^^t for our '^wayward sis- 
ters '■ will hardly venture to deny. 

In the second place he requires Yrom them an oath to abide 
by and support all the Anti-Slavery legislation of Congress 
during the existing rebellion, 80 long and so far as it is not 
abrogated by the national Legislature nor declared void by 
a decision of the Supreme Court. Now, inasmuch" as by the 
Constitution itself, the Constitution and the laws made in 
pursuance of it are declared to be the supreme law of the 
land, there is no great hardship in requiring both from the 
loyal and the disloyal inhabitants of the insurgent States an 
oath to support the supreme law of the land, so long as it 
continues to be valid and unrevoked. 

In the third place the President requires from the recipient 
of executive clemency an oath to sustain th^ proclamation 
emancipating slaves, so long and so far as it is not invali- 
dated by supreme judicial decision. Whether the Proclama- 
tions were constitutional or not is not here the question, for 
this is waived by the essential qualification of the oath, and 
left where it must eventually go, to our supreme judicial tri- 
bunal. If the Proclamation is pronounced by the judges un- 
constitutional, the oath is void ; if constitutional, it merely 
binds the conscience of the affirmant to sustain the Execu- 
tive of the United States, in a time of grievous national peril, 
in the exercise of his legitimate powers. 

In the fourth place the President's plan withholds slaves 
in the general restitution. 

And it is upon this point that in my judgment the most 
serious differences of opinion will arise. To those who hold 
that rebels who abjure the Constitution and wage war for its 
destruction are entitled to all the rights which it guaranties, 
and can only be pursued by constitutional penalties, both the 
emancipation of slaves and the refusal to restore them will 
seem the greatest of enormities. To those who hold that the 
inhabitants of the insurgent States have forfeited all their 
rights under the Constitution, and are public enemies in a 
state of war, with no rights but such as the law of nations 



accords to belligerents, the condition now under considera- 
tion w,ll be regarded only as the infliction of just and merit- 
ed punishment. 

Sn^^rt ti''' ''""^'"''^^S theories, from the firing upon 
Sumter to the present hour, proposition and reply, assertion 
and rejoinder, have raged and stormed as when- 

" From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 
Leai33 the lire thunder." 

• It seems to me however, as I have already stated, that the 
Supreme Court of the United States has closed the high de- 
bate and pronounced judgment to which we are all bound 
deferentially to bow. The judges have unanimously agreed 
in affirming that a civil war between the Government and 
the confederate States has existed for two years and a half, 
and that a civil war carries with it all the legal consequences 
of war. Now, what are these legal consequences? They 
are gat^iered together from Vattel, Phillimore, and Whea- 
ton and compendiously summed up in the opinion of Justice 
JSelson, in th^ prize cases, 2 Black, 687 : 

'• The legal consequences resulting from a state of war between two countries at 
this day are well understood, and will be found described in ever, approved wk 
21 T ^'f ^"f «-' '-'■ ^^^ People of the t.o counJiesZZeL^t 

them unla. ful-all contracts existing at the commencement of the war suspended 
and all made during Us existence utterly void. The insurance of enemie nro- 

remi.s.on of bills or money to it are illegal and void. E.xisting partnerships be- 

:::::;; :r::d 'T''' "''v-'' ^°^^'"^^' ^^^ dissoh-ed,and. in?ne iird l: 

.on of trade and intercourse, direct or indirect, is absolute and complete by the 

llTw , w H " r ' '" "^'"" ""' '"''■'''"'''' 'y ''' a<}.erse party as enemies' 
Z d'^urtlf Tr "?"'''r^""^" '' ''''''''''' P^'^P-'^^- - 1-d, (Brown... 
nulled. The ports of the respective countries may be blockaded, and letter^ of 

ZZ TJv '""■^' " ''''''' °' '''-' ^"^ ''^ '- °f P-- - <i^fi" by 

P u s r'Z-^r "r '"" ^"' ^°"P^^^^ «P--^^'-' -"Itlngfrom maritime 
r ou ; osn r ,"■ '^"'^ ' ''"^°^ ^-^ ^'^ °^"'"=^' -1^^'-^ «f -'' States 
llec ;,",;;■"';■','" " "" ""^ "' '''' benigerents. but immediately and 
>nd,re tl^ , though they take no part in the contest, but remain neutral. 

m the ehations of all her citizens or subjects, external and internal, from a sUte of 
peace, is the immediate effect and result of a state of war." 

If this be so, if, in the language of the court, - all the 
property of the people of the two countries, on land and sea, 
arc subject to confiscation and capture by the adverse party 
as enemy's property," I do not see how the conclusion can 



13 

be evaded that tlie slave property of the insurgent States was 
lawful spoil and prey of war, and that the President, as 
Commander-in-chief and sole judge of military necessities, 
was authorized in taking the services of the slaves from their 
masters, in the only efficacious way it could he done, by an 
edict of emancipation. He found back of the heavy legions 
of armed rebels, back of the bayonets and artillery which, at 
Corinth, at Murfreesboro', at Richmond, were aimed at the 
nation's life, back of Lee and Jackson and Beauregard and 
Bragg and the whole multitudinous host, four million men 
pressed into the hated and loathsome business of feedino- 
clothing, and sustaining their enemies and ours. He found 
in the slave the bone and sinew and muscle of the social state 
that was hurling upon us death and destruction, the body of 
the grim Colossus that was clutching the nation's throat/the 
forage, the subsistence, the transportation, the labor,' the 
architect, the operative, the intrenching tool of the foe. ' To 
the slave it was due that a remorseless conscription could 
skin the land of white men, and drive all, from the " whin- 
ing school-boy" to the "lean and slippered pantaloon," 
into the fighting ranks of the rebellion. And must the 
Commander-in-chief of the Federal Army withhold his hand 
from this immense arsenal of strength and power and vic- 
tory? What! not break the bone, not sever the sinew, not 
rend the muscle, not seize the subsistence, the wealth', the 
material, not tear out the heart of the rebellion, when they 
were all at his mercy by the laws of war ? What folly, what 
imbecility, what treachery to the people, what perfidy'to the 
Government, would such a refusal imply ! Military necessity ! 
Why, at the time of the proclamation we were reeling and 
staggering under well-delivered and repeated blows. * The 
elections were against us. The public sentiment of the world 
was cold and menacing. England stood ready to avenge 
the defeats and jealousies of a century by pouncing upon us 
in our weakness, and an alliance with the Confederacy was a 
part of Napoleon's plan of transatlantic aggrandizement. 
Name tiie nation that was ever more severely pressed at 
home and abroad ; name the instance in the tide of time 
where such a necessity was more paramont, when a measure 
was more unavoidable to save a realm from everlasting over- 
throw, on the one hand, and upon the other to secure for it 



14 

a glory unsurpassed, a progress without end, a triumph of 
humanity, such as was never seen before. 

Fortunately for the country, fortunately for the world, the 
President was equal to the emergency ; he did not refuse ; 
he manumitted the slaves ; and in doing this but followed 
the example of those master States who make the laws of 
war and give them authority. England has by three of her 
military commanders turned this formidable engine against 
us as an unquestioned martial right. France has freely dis- 
tributed rescripts not only of emancipation but of enfranchise- 
ment, and Spain has added the weight of her authority to 
the same rule. When in the South American republics hos- 
tile factions have dashed together, they have had no scruple 
in liberating slaves as a legitimate mode of crippling an an- 
tasronist ; and it will be hard to find a modern war carried 
on in territories of slavery in which emancipation has not 
been used as a legitimate belligerent right, and used without 
protest. As property, it was the duty of the President to 
confiscate them by the only efiectual mode ; as persons in 
duress, unv>^illiugly contributing to the strength and resources 
of the enemy, it was his duty to break up the duress by 
the only effectual mode ; as loyal subjects panting to rush to 
the defense of their imperiled country, it was his duty to re- 
move all restraint from the free exercise of their volition by 
the only effectual mode ; as disloyal subjects rendering vol- 
untary service to their masters, it was his duty to take that 
service by the only effectual mode. 

3. Just to the slave. 

Shall these once slaves but now freemen be remanded 
back to bondage? No: ''personal property once forfeited 
is always forfeited." No : slaves once legally free are always 
free. No, no ; thrice no, by the ashes of our fathers, by the 
altar of our God ! The " chosen curses," and the "hidden 
thunder in the stores of heaven" will forbid the rendition: 
a crime to them, a malediction to their masters, a shame to 
us, and a disgrace to the age. If these children of wrong 
and oppression are the lawful spoil of our victorious arms, 
give up to ihe enemy your proudest national memorials — 
the sword of Washington, the stafi' of Franklin, that time- 
worn but immortal parchment which first authoritatively 
published your independence to the world — give up to him 



15 

the blood-stained flags and trophies which, upon the brist- 
ling crest of battle, our heroic defenders have wrenched 
from his desperate grasp ; give up to him this Capitol itself, 
and throw at his feet the President's head, before you give 
up the most abject of these bondsmen disinthralled ; for in 
surrendering them you will squander one of those priceless 
moments, big with the future, worth more than a whole 
generation of either bond or free, the rare and pregnant 
occasion placed in your hand by the fortune of war of wiping 
forever African slavery from the American continent. 

If this deliverance is ever vouchsafed, then shall we be 
purged for ever of the sole source of our weakness and dis- 
sension in the past ; then will pass away for ever the sole 
cloud that threatens the glory of our future ; then will the 
American Union be transfigured into a more erect and 
shining presence, and tread with firm footsteps a loftier 
plane, and cherish nobler theories, and carry its head nearer 
the stars ; then will it be no profanation to wed its redeemed 
and unpolluted name to that of immortal Liberty ; then 
Liberty and Union will go OU;, hand in hand, and, under a 
holier inspiration and with more benign and blessed auspices, 
will revive their grand mission of peacefully acquiring and 
peacefully incorporating contiguous territories, and peace- 
fully assimilating their inhabitants ; then from the Orient to 
the Occident, from the flowery shores of the great southern 
Gulf to the frozen barriers of the great northern Bay, will 
they unite in spreading a civilization, not intertwined with 
slavery, but purged of its contamination, a civilization which 
means universal emancipPvtion, universal enfranchisement, 
universal brotherhood ; then shall we have done for the 
United States what Richelieu is said to have, done for France: 

"He found France rent asunder," 

» S 6( « fit * 

"Brawls festering to rebellion, and weak laws 
Rotting away with rust in antique sheaths. 
He re-created France ; and from the ashes 
Of the old feudal and decrepit carcass, * 

Civilization, on her luminous wings, 
Soared, Phoenix-lilce, to Jove. ' ' 

Despair not, then, soldiers, statesmen, citizens, women, 
who are fighting energetically for a nation's life. The cloud 
which now shuts down before your vision will yet disclose 



16 



IS surer h„,ng Peace shall be born from war, and out of 
chaos order shall yet emerge. We shall dwell together in 
harmony and but one nation shall inhabit onr sea-girt bor- 
der,. We seem sailing along the land, hearing the ripple 
that breaks upon the shore, where our recreated and regen! 
orated Kepubhc, after it has passed through this fiery fur- 
nace of war, these gates of death, shall be permanent y in- 
tailed. We shall yet tread its meadows and pastures green 
trade .n Us mart.,, hve in its palaces, worship in it. temple,' 
and legislate m Us Capitol. The providence of God mo^s' 
throngh great cycles of time. If we could onJ>- .t-.'-na. noin* 
m the future that commands a su"'.iently comprehensive" 
retrospect, all the mysteries of our historic evolution would 
unfold then- meaning. We should learn why our iournev to 
this "more perfect Union" was so long and wearisome ; ;.hv 
the morn was so long in breaking; why diverse races w-er"e 
at the outset planted on this continent ; why we strn^-led 
through Indian, Spanish, French, and English wars tTpo- 
U.cal independence; why just as the uew-born nation was 
hardenmg mto the bone of manhood" it was suffered to 
divide 1 self into hpstile armies, that have crossed each 
other s track, and intersected and rushed and crashed to- 
gether, as the planets would, if the forces which hold them 
in their orbits were once suspended ; why religion and 
knowledge and law were too feeble to bind together repelaut 
societies ; why bigotry and intolerance were but half-cruci- 
fied in our best men ; why slavery was ever generated ; whv 
It di, not die in the womb, and why it so long impeded th'e 
march of the American people to national unity and domes- 
tic tranquility. 



1 



